Hardwood Floors

Hardwood floors are perfect for people who don't like the lint build up created by carpet.  Also, the warmth of hardwood floors are hard to beat.
My husband and I just moved into a new home. The home isn’t actually new. It was built in 1953. I immediately fell in love with this small, ranch home once I walked in the door. The home is modest and it was in terrible shape when we first visited it, but once I saw the magnificent hardwood floors, I knew that this was the house for us.

We had a lot of obstacles to overcome after buying the home. I am allergic to fleas and the house was infested. We don’t have pets, but the former owner had two large dogs and three cats. The only rooms that had carpeting were the smaller of the two bedrooms and the bathroom. We removed the rugs and what did we find in the small bedroom? More hardwood floors! I was aggravated that the home was in such disarray, but the hardwood floors immediately elevated my mood.

The previous owner was not very clean. We had to bomb the house twice to get rid of the fleas. She left abruptly without taking the time to take care of the fleas herself. She also had no time to clean the home. Ever. My lovely hardwood floors were saturated with urine in some areas and they were covered with dirt. Nevertheless, the hardwood floors still managed to appeal to me. My biggest concern was getting them back in good condition.



The first thing I needed to address was the smell. I am fussy about odors and I’m not used to being around pets, so the urine smell had to go immediately. My husband covered the basement floor with epoxy paint. Ironically the strong chemical odors that would make a normal person run out of the home made me very happy. I was just glad that the pet smells were gone, at least downstairs.

But what about my precious hardwood floors? I decided to do a little research before I did anything rash. The flea infestation may have been a good thing because I couldn’t stay in the home until they were gone. This gave me time to read about removing pet odors from hardwood floors. I am very glad that I researched before I cleaned the floors because it could have led to disaster.

I discovered that you should never wash hardwood floor that have been sprayed by pets. Some cleaning agents may make the odors worse. Others can lock the odors into the wood and they can never be removed. My first instinct was to use a cleaner like Murphy’s Oil soap, but this is one of the cleaning products that can lock pet odors into the wood.

The best thing to do is to buy a urine odor remover from a retail store or pet supply store. I found an excellent pet odor remover at my local Wal-Mart. I simply saturated the floors with the odor remover and waited for it to dry. If I still smelled an odor, I saturated the area again and waited for it to dry.

This did the trick. Liquid pet odor removers work extremely well on wood surfaces. After the odor was gone, I was free to wash and polish my beautiful hardwood floors. I do love my new house.